The Zoo in June

Our fantastic zoo has a new exhibit...polar bears! We've been planning to get up there to see them, but time, as usual, has not been my friend ;) So when my friend, Jenny, invited us to go along with her gang yesterday, we were excited!

Let me just say, I don't think I've ever seen the zoo that busy! The crowds were insane! Of course, the worst was by the new polar bears, but, really, it was just a mass of people everywhere we went! And even though our kids go to the zoo often and even though we see the same animals every time (GAH!) they  have trouble walking by without lingering and reading the information and watching to see what that animal will do. I found myself scooting them along many times saying, "We'll come back when it's not so busy. Keep moving!". I'm not used to sharing our zoo with that many people!

Anyway, since I took a massive amount of pictures of the polar bears, I thought I'd break this post up a bit. ;) They were really fun to watch! Totally entertaining! (I can't wait to head back this fall when we can sit and watch them!)

We took the ramp to the underwater viewing first. It looked the least crowded. We were wrong, of course ;) But! It was worth it!

This picture shows a tiny bit of what the crowds were like. Everyone just crammed in!

It was a bit weird to watch her swim over-head like that!

She lunged for some fish and the crowd gasped! It was so funny!

Then we went up top to see whatever we could see from there:

There was a zoo employee who happened to wander over to us as we were watching and told us that they are twin sisters. The one in the water, Anana, is more of an entertainer. She loves swimming around and people-watching ;) The other one, Aurora, is a bit more reserved, but she ended up putting on quite a show for us too! As we were watching her, she stood up and started walking backwards. The zoo lady said she likes to backup like that before she dives into the water so at that point, all eyes were on her! She took off running up to the edge, then she stopped! She did that like seven or eight times, teasing us! Then, she finally dove in:

Yay! It was fun to see.

About that time, our friends showed up and we got to watch them a bit longer before we wandered off in search of an area to have our lunch that wasn't so crowed! Before we left, Angi organized a group shot:

There's a couple of stroller-bound little guys missing, but with those crowds, they were not released!